The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1887-07-16
Sunset Cox on the Return of the
Flags.

Hon. S. S. Cox, ex-U. S. Minister to Tur-
key, and the wit of Congress when member
of that body, thus alludes to the Confederate
flag incident in an address delivered before
the Tammany organization on the 4th instant.
After tracing the history of the republic
through its various stages he says:
Thine rolls along. A quarter of a century
elapses. A new generation appears. Slavery
is dead. Slaves are counted one for one i'll
he representation. The amendments of the
constitution are unquestioned. The South is
iraternal; they meetin one common Congress;
they vote pensions to their late enemies; they
meet together, as at Gettysburg, upon the
fields of strife, 10 renew their pledges to a
united country-are proud to recognize the
sentiment of Cicero-one thought for the re-
public. The flags of the battle lie mouldering
in the attics of the War Department. A ten
der-illegal, but generous-is made of these
now symbols of the unhappy strife, when lo'
a cataclysm that has no parallel for violence,
noise and quake since the world began. A
party without an issue, party without hope,
seizes on this innocent and clement thought
to arouse into fame the embers, almost fire
less, of sectional hate. | can find no parallel
or illustration for the unseemly performance.
beg pardon. l have one.
Last summer it was my pleasure to live in
Pimkipo. It is few miles below COnstan-
tinople in the sea of Marmora. The isle,
like that in Shakespeare's Tempest, was
''full of strange noises the nightin-
gale in the evening, nor the cocks at dawn,
nor the shepherds or the vendors of fish, nor
the dry cicada, nor the flap of the American
flag in front of our Legation. These were
pleasures, and they did not interrupt any
morning dreams, but harkl when the sun
paints in gold and purple the Asian mount
aims, hear an eqniyocal sort of brute. 1t is
the distant thunder of Jove from Mount
Olympus, in sight of our isle. Is it the roll
ing of the Ismid train across the channeR
1t starts ATARI 1t approaches 1t is-No?
Yes? 1t is the grand chorus of the jackasses.
1t rights the isle from its propriety.
Be it known that the isle is full of donkeys
They carry water and vegetables-and tour
ists--up- and down over the mountains. L
am not unfriendIy to the donkey. He has
good name for patience and industry. L
was familiar with them, in and out of Con-
gress. / admire their courage. They can
whip California grizzly. But | must draw
the line on some Of his qualities. | draw it
on the bray When Jack salutes his Jenny,
though miles apart, then the jubilee of noisy
affection begins. 1t is an internal concert,
amorous, jocund and ear-benumbing: 1t
STARTS WIFI III CAdSScIutCu NtoC Vi
This rasps your soul. The beast loses, then
catches its breath with harsh, squekish sibil-
alton, until roar as of forty hungry lions
comes to its relief All the powers of wheezy,
whistling, gasping suction are exhausted.
Then follow terrific expirations of the below
ing monster suction and emission-repeated
with 'sdamnable iteration''-until the noise
dies out in agony unutterable. fused to hear
when a boy the creaking of the untarred
wheels of the Conestoga team from Pennsyl-
vania. | have lately heard the screaming
shadoof turned by blind buffalos. pumping
the Nile upon the fruitful land of Egypt, but
never before or since have | heard such
diabolical concert as this braying of the don
KEYS of PimIzipo--until Foraker got the asthma
about the flags and Fairchild got the palsy;
and John Sherman both. Wisconsin took up
the asinine strain; Ohio gives its sonorous
bray, and New York, with her new Senator
and her Greeley Tribune, adds her furious
illumination. All bedlam was let loose in a
howl of horror-and all for what? If not to
provoke assassination, at least to regain polit-
ical power; not by the still voice of reason,
but by the elemental fury which is as senseless
as it is tempestuous. Do these howlefs think
the people do not know what the incident
meant? A tender-it may be inopportnne
and not legal-but tender of kindly regard,
after generation of the warp and wool, the
mere threads, the colored emblems of lost
cause, which all good men would desire to be
forgotten"